Ever since Google first announced the changes it was making to its privacy policy, an air of confusion set over the technology world. Users are concerned that Google will be selling their information to third parties and that Google will be keeping “Big Brother”-like tabs on them. But these rumors could not be farther from the truth. Once you hear everything you need to know about Google’s new privacy policy, you’ll learn that the changes will actually benefit users.
The big change to the policy is actually quite simple. Previously, Google had a separate privacy policy for each of its individual platforms, but since the new policy went into place on March 1, all of these platforms came together under one, single privacy policy. This change makes the privacy policy simpler to navigate and easier to understand. It also brings together all of Google’s services to improve user experience.
Since Google platforms are now all together in the new policy, they are more closely intertwined than before. This new relationship allows you to work more seamlessly across multiple platforms, like Google+ and Google Docs, at the same time. The change also allows the Google platforms you use to work together to your advantage. For example, if you use Google Calendar to schedule appointments and Google Maps to get to these appointments, the two services can now work together and use the time of an appointment, your location, and traffic on your route to determine if you’ll make it to your destination on time.
Another change that occurred under the new policy is the degree to which Google tailors your online experience just for you. Since all of its platforms are under one policy, Google can view you as a single user across all of its services. This gives Google a more holistic view of each user than it has ever had. To see your online activity like Google does, you can log onto the new Google Dashboard. With this image of each user, Google can begin to offer much more personalized services to each individual. Such personalized service includes advertisements specifically targeted on topics about which you are interested, search results that are like those you generally find useful, automatic correction of frequent spelling errors, suggested contact lists, and more. Google even says that, when you type in a generic search term like “jaguar,” it will know if you’re looking for the car or the animal.
Because Google’s personalization of services is based on the information it gathers about each user, the more data Google has about you, the more personal experience you will have.
So, in order to receive the most benefits from these changes, you need to be using a number of Google services on a regular basis. Google Apps users, who, as a group, use a wide variety of Google services daily, will see the most improvement to their service from Google.
Even though using more Google services more often will contribute to a more personalized service, there may be things you don’t want Google to know about you. Google accounted for this idea when it created features like the “incognito window” in the Google Chrome web browser and the “off the record” chat option in Gmail. Additionally, you can always sign out of Google and still use the search function.
Now that you know everything you need to about Google’s new privacy policy, it should be obvious that the changes Google has made are positive and will benefit each user as an individual.
Article Author – Cloud Sherpas is a leading cloud service provider and was named the “Google Enterprise 2011 Partner of the Year.” As one of the first Google Enterprise partners, Cloud Sherpas has migrated over one million users across a variety of industries from legacy, on-premise messaging systems to Google Apps, helping organizations adopt cloud computing to innovate and dramatically reduce their IT expenses. Headquartered in Atlanta, Cloud Sherpas has regional offices in locations including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Austin and Sydney, and has more Google Apps Certified Deployment Specialists than any other partner in the world.
